Middle East Maritime Security Force for Transporting Oil (Richard McPherson) USofA

Middle East Maritime Security Force for Transporting Oil©

By Richard McPherson, LCDR, U.S. Navy (Retired) The history of oil and strife in the Middle East is available for anyone to read in thousands of papers, reports, and books. For many decades it has been a history of war and military action over the transport of oil, not only by nations and tribes of the Middle East but by the nations that consume the crude oil. Its long past time oil rich nations in the Middle East had their own maritime security force to safeguard the flow of oil from their region to the open oceans.

In 1945, The Arab League was founded by Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, agreeing to close cooperation on matters of economics, communication, culture, nationality, social welfare, and health. They renounced violence for the settlement of conflicts between members and empowered League offices to mediate such disputes, as well as disputes with non-members.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was founded in 1960, with the signing of an agreement by five countries: the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. They became the Founder Members of OPEC, later joined by other middle east countries Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Algeria. The OPEC governing statute stipulates that “any country with a substantial net export of crude petroleum, which has fundamentally similar interests to those of Member Countries, may become a Full Member of the Organization, if accepted by a majority of three-fourths of Full Members, including the concurring votes of all Founder Members.”

The Arab League and OPEC members in the Middle East have shared interests in oil exports, economics, communication, culture, nationality, social welfare, and health as declared in 1945. Decisions to invest revenues from oil exports created modern cities, ports, airports, universities, hospitals, airlines, shipping fleets, and digital communications. To sustain the income and benefits from oil revenues that support their people, and that should enable them to enjoy security and live without fear, those same decision makers need to create a joint force committed to securing the maritime exports of oil (and more recently, gas and petroleum products) upon which their economies depend. All have invested in military weapons and training of military forces. They know what to do. An Arab League Maritime Security Force is long overdue.

Such an Arab League Maritime Security Force would serve to reduce local rivalries.

Importantly, it also would reduce the need for foreign military forces to station so many military forces and assets in the region – sometimes simply to keep in check other foreign military forces – to defend the flow of oil to the rest of the world.

It’s time for the United States to work with Middle East leaders to build a new strategy for securing oil flows from the Middle East. U.S. taxpayers contribute around $100 billion annually to the Department of Defense (DOD) to station troops and fight 1

frequent battles in the Middle East largely to preserve Arab League and OPEC nations’ export industry. If instead, those nations could constitute an effective joint force to secure the flow of oil from the region, the U.S. could become more of a trading partner, an economic partner rather than a military partner and defender. Such a strategy would reduce regional tensions as well as reduce the current trend of buying hugely expensive weapons systems to threaten each other. It also would provide a solid basis for the removal of foreign military forces, including notably, forces from both Russia and the United States, which would reduce the burdens on U.S. taxpayers.

In a new Middle East, largely secured by their own joint force, the U.S. could shift it’s Middle East relationship away from investing tax dollars in the DoD for ships, aircraft, helicopters and military personnel to safeguard the oil flow out of those countries.

Instead, our relationship could focus on private investment for long-term energy security for the world. Oil will continue to be principle energy – the life-blood – of world transport energy for many years to come. The most effective way to reduce the intense demands on oil that lead to high price volatility, international conflict, and even war, is to replace oil’s use in electricity production. And the best way to do that is through nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy, the largest zero emission electricity source, can reduce conflict as well as environmental depredation. By helping the Middle East secure their local energy needs for electricity and desalinization, the limited oil resources will last much longer as the world continues its search for other sources of energy through solar, wind, hydrogen or other sources.

A gift from lessons by the United States learned three times over the past 62-years, first in 1956, again in 1976 and once again in 2016 of the need for one standard nuclear plant can be summed up in the promising design of a natural recirculation small modular reactor (SMR) manufactured in a facility to reduce costs, provide better quality control and then transported to secure sites for installation. In multi-unit facilities, providing around 60 Megawatts of secure carbon free electricity, they offer the flexibility to supply cyber and electromagnetic magnetic pulse protected electricity as part of an integrated power system from solar, wind, geothermal and cogeneration for optimized economics.

This shift from military to carbon free generated electricity and thermal energy from SMR’s for desalinization will greatly aid in reducing – ideally eliminating – the need for military intervention over access to oil.

The fuel cycle can be secured too by meeting U.S. and International nuclear safeguards, fuel for the SMRs will be owned and leased from a special use U.S. company. Upon removal from the SMRs partially spent fuel will cool in the pool associated with the SMR. When the decay heat is such that the partially spent fuel can then be placed in a dry cask and transported back to the company in the U.S. for storage and eventual reprocessing as it becomes economical.

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Since entering the U.S. Navy nuclear power program, Richard McPherson has been nuclear power since 1963. He represented the United States at the International Atomic Energy Agency as a member of special six-nation group set up after the Chernobyl accident on “Nuclear Fuel Cycle Facilities, the Environment and Public Opinion�. He is the co-founder of Global Humanitarian Resources, Inc. dedicated to helping humanity under the nexus of agriculture, water and energy.

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